Venezuelans expect no less. They want no part of their ugly past. They'll put their bodies on the line to prevent it. They did before. They'll do it again.

Bolivarianism is policy. It's vital to preserve. It's polar opposite neoliberal harshness. America and Venezuela are constitutional worlds apart. More on that below.

On March 5, word came at 4:45PM. Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced it. "We have just received the most tragic and awful information," he said. Hugo Chavez Frias died. "It's a moment of deep pain."

After two years of battling cancer, President Hugo Chavez has died today at 4.25 pm.

Vice-president Nicolas Maduro made the announcement on public television shortly after, speaking from the Military Hospital in Caracas, where Chavez was being treated.

Military and Bolivarian police patrols have been sent out into the street to protect the people and maintain the peace. For now, things are calm here, with some people celebrating by honking their car horns, and many others quietly mourning in their homes. Around the country mourners are also gathering in the main plazas to rally, and in some cases, to pray.

Maduro made the announcement just a few hours after addressing the nation for an hour, accusing the opposition of taking advantage of the current situation to cause destabilisation.

There have been domestic and international reactions to the reelection of Hugo Chavez last night in Venezuela’s presidential election, while the final vote tally has widened Chavez’s margin of victory to almost 11%.

The numbers

Chavez was reelected as Venezuelan president for the 2013 – 2019 period, defeating the challenge from conservative rival Henrique Capriles Radonski for the Roundtable of Democratic Unity coalition (MUD). It will be his third term in office under the 1999 constitution, and is his fourth election as Venezuelan president since 1998.

With 96.7% of votes totaled, Chavez has won 8,044,106 votes (55.11%), to Capriles’ 6,461,612 (44.27%), widening his victory to almost 11%, greater than announced in the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) “first bulletin” results on Sunday night.

Last night we were squashed and pushed as the crowd surged into the Miraflores Palace to hear Chavez’s victory speech. People were so happy, they didn’t mind their feet being trodden on, the humidity of the air and the sweat of bodies and all the standing up, they were exuberant and they shouted and danced and jumped up and down and yelled out to strangers and threw beer up in the air, and even a few shoes. Yet, among them, I felt a bit down, because the results were quite close, because over six million people supported, by voting for Capriles, selfishness (he had focused his campaign on Venezuela ending its solidarity with other countries) and the destruction and sale of their country.

The results

With most votes counted, Chavez won with 8,044,106 votes, or 55.11% to Capriles’ 6,461,612 (44.27%) for a difference of 1,582,494 votes, or almost 11%. Chavez also won (according to the results as they are today) in 21 states and the Capital District (Caracas), and lost to Capriles in Merida and Tachira states,. He won in Zulia and Carabobo- where there are currently opposition governors. No one voted for the other candidates, with third place going to Reina Sequera with 0.47% of the vote.

Hugo Chavez has won the Venezuelan presidential election with 54.42% of the vote against 44.97% for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. Chavez has made his victory speech, while Capriles has recognised his defeat.

The “first bulletin” results were announced by the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, at around 10pm Venezuelan time, with 90% of the votes totaled, enough to give Chavez an irreversible victory.

The CNE president said, “Once again we’ve had a calm electoral process, without problems, with the joy of this people who decided to vote massively today”.

A spontaneous street party immediately kicked off in the centre of the Andean city of Merida, and a massive crowd of Chavez supporters began celebrating in front of the presidential palace, Miraflores, in Caracas.

On Wednesday Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez confirmed reports that his government is “bringing home” 211 tons of gold currently stored in international banks and that plans are underway to nationalize the entire gold mining industry in the Caribbean nation. In a move aimed at protecting the Venezuelan economy from the global economic crisis, the president also said his government plans to transfer the country’s international cash reserves out of the U.S. and Europe and into Brazilian, Chinese, and Russian banks.

The physical transfer of Venezuela’s international gold reserves, from the vaults of foreign banks to the Caracas-based headquarters of the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), will increase the BCV’s gold reserves from the current US$ 7 billion to some US$ 18.3 billion.

In late November, Venezuela was hammered by torrential rains and flooding that left 35 people dead and roughly 130,000 homeless. If George Bush had been president, instead of Hugo Chavez, the displaced people would have been shunted off at gunpoint to makeshift prison camps--like the Superdome--as they were following Hurricane Katrina. But that's not the way that Chavez works. The Venezuelan president quickly passed "enabling laws" which gave him special powers to provide emergency aid and housing to flood victims. Chavez then cleared out the presidential palace and turned it into living quarters for 60 people, which is the equivalent of turning the White House into a homeless shelter. The disaster victims are now being fed and taken care of by the state until they can get back on their feet and return to work.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez began his ten day international tour yesterday in Russia. The visit, which lasted yesterday and today, was his ninth to the country, and centred on a nuclear energy agreement as well as 14 other agreements in the areas of finance, housing, and agriculture.

Peaceful nuclear energy

Chavez and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a plan for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Venezuela and to begin the process of acquiring the necessary technology. Russian engineers will help construct the first such plant in Venezuela.

Washington has an expansionary policy in which Latin America is simply a backyard for US military bases, believes Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega.

In an exclusive interview with RT, he said it is time for Latin American countries to unite against what they call a policy of aggression.

RT:Comandante, thank you for joining us today. Regarding the coup d’etat in Honduras, did you see it as an isolated incident, or could such situations possibly reoccur?

Daniel Ortega: I believe that our nations cannot remain calm. The Honduran coup was a blow for all Latin American countries which, just a few weeks prior to that, had a meeting with President Obama in Trinidad and Tobago, where the latter proclaimed the beginning of new relations with Latin America. That coup meant a fight against intentions expressed in Trinidad and Tobago, not just against the Latin American people but against policy proclaimed by President Obama as well. If the US forces of reaction are capable of organizing and doing such a coup openly in front of their president, we cannot even talk about what would happen in the future. These forces are trying to establish their power in spite of suggestions and obligations taken by President Obama in relation to Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, friends, I promise that I will not talk more than most have spoken this afternoon. Allow me an initial comment which I would have liked to make as part of the previous point which was expressed by the delegations of Brazil, China, India, and Bolivia. We were there asking to speak but it was not possible. Bolivia's representative said, my salute of course to Comrade President Evo Morales, who is there, President of the Republic of Bolivia.

[Audience applause]

She said among other things the following, I noted it here, she said the text presented is not democratic, it is not inclusive.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterating Washington's support on October 5 for the Arias Plan to resolve the Honduran crisis, which she hoped would "get Honduras back on the path to a more sustainable democracy". But the plan would see Honduran President Manuel Zelaya return to his post and sit out the rest of his term without any real power.

Clinton said her government was concerned "there has been a pulling away from democracy, from human rights, from the kind of partnership that we would want with our neighbours".

If we remove the Orwellian jargon, what Clinton is saying is clear: at stake today is either the reaffirmation of US hegemony in a region it has long controlled via military dictatorship and puppet neoliberal governments, or the continued advance of a profound democratic movement for change sweeping the continent.

Canada's foreign policy, as that country which is closer geographically, economically, and militarily with the US than any other, has long been circumscribed by the whims of the world's lone Superpower.

Part of the 'hidden wiring' of the US-Canada relationship is premised on the belief that there is a role for Canada in places where the US carries a lot of counter-productive baggage. New records obtained by The Dominion show just how actively intertwined Canada's foreign policy is with the US-led 'democracy' promotion project in Venezuela.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently published a 230 page report on Venezuela entitled "A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela."

In a press release about the report, HRW's Americas director, Jose Miguel Vivanco stated that "rather than advancing rights protections" the Chavez government has "moved in the opposite direction, sacrificing basic guarantees in pursuit of its own political agenda."

The Venezuelan army occupied 32 farms in the western state of Lara last Thursday, sparking protests from local sugarcane producers, after the National Land Institute (INTI) expropriated the lands as part of the government efforts to boost national food production amidst global shortages.

INTI President Juan Carlos Loyo called the intervention a "rescue" of idle farmland aimed at the "agricultural reactivation" of the area outside the state capital Barquisimeto, in accordance with the 2001 Land and Agricultural Development Law.

The law is based on Venezuela's 1999 constitution, which deems large, idle estates known as Latifundios, "contrary to the interests of society" and opens the door to their taxation or expropriation.

South America: Fact Sheet: Arbitration between ExxonMobil and Venezuela

by Embassy of Venezuela in the U.S.February 18, 2008

Despite Venezuela's proposal for an amicable solution and an ongoing international arbitration process, ExxonMobil has resorted to aggressive, unilateral and coercive measures to disqualify any proposed solution, something that could be described as "judiciary terrorism." Venezuela's intention has been to bring illegal oil projects from the rich Orinoco Oil Belt into its legal framework and thus stop the continued transferring of resources needed for social development from the People of Venezuela to the coffers of large foreign multinational companies. This has been accepted by all oil companies operating in Venezuela, except ExxonMobil.